In A Glimmering Gotham
by valentinosilkflowers
Summary: A smattering of one-shots centered around Manhattan's endlessly long-legged and impossibly ethereal Aphrodite. It is so easy to see that she shines just a bit brighter, glitters just a bit more radiantly than the rest, that we forget her soul is just a bit darker, charred just a bit blacker than us too. Without doubt, she is a bewitching enigma, a fascinating object of intrigue.
1. Dolce Far Niente

**In A Glimmering Gotham**

Summary: A smattering of one-shots centered around Manhattan's endlessly long-legged and impossibly ethereal Aphrodite. She's the Upper East Side's glorious Golden Girl, a femme fatale seductress and fresh-faced ingénue all at once. Her charisma, that special combination of charm and sophistication and effortlessness that cannot be replicated, is the defining essence of who Serena van der Woodsen is. It is so easy to see that she shines just a bit brighter, glitters just a bit more radiantly than the rest, that we forget her soul is just a bit darker, charred just a bit blacker than the rest too. Without doubt, she is a bewitching enigma, a fascinating object of intrigue and allure.

* * *

A/N: These are pretty much just random mostly somewhat dark one-shots about our beloved SVDW (don't ask why everything of mine seems to come out not-super-happy and fluffy – I mean, I'll probably have several fluffy and purely rom-com-esque humour pieces too – but I guess Serena's ability to veil her darkness from the prying eyes of Page Six and the UES is one of the major things that really fascinates me about her). So I'd say most of these are somewhat AU, and the timelines may not be really specified all the time. Umm. Plus I kind of hate Blair right now. No offense. So you know, it's kind of hard to update a fic with the main character being someone you hate, even if she's your own version of her. Idk. Anyway.

Also, the writing style is…different, I guess, from the norm. Mainly, it just goes back and forth between extended Serena thoughts and actual things that are happening. It's a bit 'jumbled', I'd say, in a way, and a bit confusing but I do this because Serena is high and drunk and screwed up right now, psychoanalyzing herself at the same time and drifting in and out of what's really happening. Aaaaand I've definitely scared you all away. Anyway, though, on with the main event…

* * *

**Dolce Far Niente**

_I know that I'm a mess with my long hair and my suntan_

_Short dress, bare feet_

_I don't care what they say about me_

_What they say about me_

* * *

It was so wrong. Just so, so wrong. But she was numb now, dancing along the blur of a line that separated morals from just _living _and _feeling_, and right now, she wasn't quite sure she really cared about being a good, smiling angel of gold anyway. The only thing _golden_ about her at the moment, Serena mused with a wistful sigh, was her beachy blonde hair. But even then it wasn't really blonde anymore - hadn't been since she'd emerged from a trip to Frederic Fekkai a day or two ago, newly attained copper hued mane symbolizing her fresh start.

But oh, sweet irony. The things she'd done since her new beginning. The white that should have been her new record had quickly become the fine powder that sent her spiraling into a world where she flew on gossamer wings, never weighed down by Lily or Blair or judgment or expectations, floating in a universe where Carter still wanted and adored her (because she was Serena van der Woodsen, and screwing up was just her fucking modus operandi, no matter how much she tried to change or how far she sent herself away or even how good she tried to be). The shots she'd consumed desperately like a lifeline weren't espresso ones in her paper cup of Dean and Deluca anymore – no, they came in clear glass now, lined on a cool counter while a dull beat throbbed into her head. The red tint of her once golden tresses no longer were the proud symbol of a clean slate, but of shaming lust and sinful hedonism, the type only attained through a never-ending amount of carnal knowledge a girl of nineteen with her breeding and standing should not have known yet (not that she was a girl anymore; she'd been a scarlet woman since fifteen, or so everyone close had told her again and again).

The worst part of all this, though, was that she enjoyed – indulged in, lived for – this walk on the wild side. She'd been born into opulence, told she could have it all, whatever her flighty heart desired. (Because between her bank account and smile and legs, was there anything not million dollar about her?) And because she'd been granted la vie en rose, was it really that wrong and unthinkable that she'd simply tried everything and anything? To live la dolce vita was to live it to the fullest, and so why _wouldn't _she? She didn't _want_ Yale or Brown or Bass Industries or stuffy social events – they didn't bring her a rush of adrenaline, didn't give her life a meaning, didn't make her feel golden or wanted or worshipped or desired in the way expensive coke and tequila and flirting did (or in the way Carter did, but she wasn't ever going to admit that to anyone, not even herself). Most of all, though, they didn't give her escape.

And so that's probably why she's wound up at Tripp's house again, riding out her cocaine high and gripping a bottle of champagne in her hand, dress riding up scandalously high on her thighs – not that she cares anymore, because she knows with Maureen out of the house for the weekend, Tripp will be ripping the Herve Leger off of her in fifteen minutes, maximum. It's wrong wrong wrong; she knows that even in her current state. And yet there's something about it, something probably life-damaging to Tripp and his marriage and his image if anyone finds out (which they will, inevitably, as the paparazzi always do) but at this stage, she's still too selfish and blank to really register that it's a fine line she's wobbling on – one that, if she falls on the wrong side, will end in utter social destruction for both the Vanderbilts and van der Woodsens. But she pushes those thoughts to the back of her head - because if she's already falling to the gutters, she may as well have a glorious fall - and instead focuses on the warm body that has just opened the door, the wide eyes already glazing over with desperate want, taking in the obscene hemline she's pushed her dress up to somewhere between doing lines and dance-dance-dancing. So she gets out a breathy _hey _and half of a _can I come in _before their limbs are tangling and mouths fusing, clothes being ripped off and thrown to places unknown, scattering in a trail from the door to the bedroom like Hansel and Gretel and their little bread crumbs (only this is the 18A version, which ends not in the escape from the fat cannibalistic witch, but in a crash of reality and an uncomfortable cab ride home).

* * *

It's only really during times like this that she allows her mind to psychoanalyze herself, lying in post-coital bliss (though it's not really bliss; never really is complete satisfaction unless she's with a certain blue-eyed brunette, the same blue-eyed brunette who introduced her to the world of carnal desires - not, of course, that she allows that realization to develop any clearer than a tiny voice than the back of her head).

And all she really wants to do is forget forget forget, because she feels dirty and stupid and disgusted with herself, so she tangles herself further into the sheets that still smell of carnal knowledge and whispers, "I'm a fuck-up, such a fuck-up," over and over and over again until the words have lost their meaning and she's just clinging onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, every time she repeats them she's cleansing herself from the past and moving into a clean future – a future where a new Serena exists and the old one has purged itself dead (the irony this all was – her best friend physically purges, she emotionally purges, but both would never quite get their slates completely clean, ever).

An oath, even if it's in her head, sworn to herself and no one else, is an oath; she's not going to unintentionally or intentionally seduce anyone anymore, not going to indulge in fiery liquid or white powder or carnality, not going to even flirty harmlessly, least of all with married men or teachers or people _old enough to be her father_, because even though the rush she gets when they flirt back and the euphoria she experiences when she has them like putty in her hands is more addictive and satisfying than cocaine-fueled sex, it's just wrong wrong wrong. Because this is _marriage _they're talking about, a _legal bond _and a "till death do us part" (not that Lily ever taught her to believe that disillusion), an "I will always love you" and "you are the only one in my life" that she's potentially driving off the cliff, and he's not some faceless frat boy she randomly meets half-drunk who fucks like a rabbit every night with someone different, someone who she'll never have to see again or remember. This is _Tripp_, her family friend and close friend's cousin, someone older than her by over half a decade, someone she has to see year after year at Christmas dinner and in the Hamptons when they summer there.

She hates it, she really really really does. Hates how she doesn't even know who she is, hates how she can't be who she wants to be simply because she can, hates how she doesn't even realize she's reeling a new toy in until it's too late and they're already buying her Harry Winston and Erickson Beamon and Cartier (she doesn't even fucking _like_ Cartier, for god's sake) and they're groveling on their knees ("Serena please, you know you want it" – she doesn't anymore for sure now – "Serena just give me a chance, let me show you real love no one else has shown you before" – she's not looking for a taste for a Disney story, and she's definitely not someone who does love – "Serena, my wife never has to know, I'll even divorce her for you, come on" – She's not a whore in a cathouse or a mistress in a West Coast mansion, and nor is she a marriage ruiner - or, at least, not an active, conscious one - and she'll never be one of those things, no matter what people say). Most of all, though, out of all the things she hates, she hates how she wasn't even thinking of Tripp during the mediocre sex that was a drunk and high 6 at best, 3 while sober and clean. Instead, her mind is focused on _him _again, and she hates herself even more for even remembering him at all - but is it really her fault that he was the best she'd ever had and that she'd wanted to fix things for him to prove that she cared about and believed in and trusted him, that she wanted him to stay (here, with her) and not go to a fucking _oil rig_ in _Texas_? (And yet he'd left her anyway, off to build himself back together while she crumbled apart. He'd told her to hate him, and yet here she was, too tired to pretend she wanted Chuck to send his hit man to trail his nemesis like a bloodhound and bring him to an end.)

The tap in the bathroom has stopped running for a while now and there's a loud sigh that emits from the other side of the door, so Serena takes this as her cue to leave before the awkward stammering, hoping to escape before the overwhelming shame and guilt sets in. Fitting the bandage dress back on with a cringe - she hasn't ever felt so thoroughly dirty in her life - she steals a few tabs of painkillers from the kitchen cupboard before grabbing her bag and grimacing from the brightness of the world, running out the door while hailing a cab and snagging her hair into a messy ponytail all at the same time.

Once she's seated in the yellow vehicle, the grey of the cracked vinyl seats clashing with the sumptuous red material of her dress, she can't help but notice that with her Tom Ford sunglasses slung over her bloodshot eyes, the Manhattan sun heralding a new day is quite something, a bright ball of blinding white rising over this dirty and busy city - but then again, maybe it's just the massive hangover she's sporting, the three painkillers she's taken making everything in the world seem profoundly beautiful.

She doesn't mind though, not one bit. If she's learned anything in her hedonistic life, it's that escapism is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and that illusions are worth whatever their price, because reality just always hurts _so fucking much_.

* * *

A/N: So, thanks to that little anon who encouraged me with Polaris and using Carterena. I'd had this little oneshot written in portions, and when I'd just gotten the idea in my head to do her sleeping with Tripp but thinking of someone else, I'd put in Nate's name, but tbh, I'd always felt like there was an emotional depth and understanding that Serenate lacked; this understanding of Serena's dark side, and then I found my utter devotion, worshipping and love for Otp: Who the hell is he not to want you?, and I realized that Carter and Serena's relationship was actually really deep, honestly. And I'm absolutely, irrevocably in love with them so I have no regrets, but this doesn't mean that Polaris is going to be Carterena, because I have it planned out a certain way and there's going to be OCs and new characters introduced, but I've put that on hiatus. I really want to write Carterena right now – their summer together finding her father was so beautiful and sweet and everything amazing and van der Baizen, and Santorini just is even more epic and mysterious – and I've definitely fallen head over heels for them, clearly. (Plus, I mean, hello, Carter is awesome – how can you not love him?)

The title is obviously an ironic/sarcastic one. In case it wasn't as clear as I thought it was...

To each their own,

VSF.

P.S. You know how much I love hearing your thoughts. Reviews make my day :)


	2. Persona Non Grata

**In A Glimmering Gotham**

Summary: A smattering of one-shots centered around Manhattan's endlessly long-legged and impossibly ethereal Aphrodite. She's the Upper East Side's glorious Golden Girl, a femme fatale seductress and fresh-faced ingénue all at once. Her charisma, that special combination of charm and sophistication and effortlessness that cannot be replicated, is the defining essence of who Serena van der Woodsen is. It is so easy to see that she shines just a bit brighter, glitters just a bit more radiantly than the rest, that we forget her soul is just a bit darker, charred just a bit blacker than the rest too. Without doubt, she is a bewitching enigma, a fascinating object of intrigue and allure.

* * *

A/N: Another in the series of I-don't-really-know-what-I'm-doing-with-my-life-writing mediocrities. Tbh I should probably go back to Polaris but don't really feel like it atm. Also, I don't really know what it is with the non-English-sounding-but-still-in-the-English-language titles. Maybe it's my subconscious telling me I deserve a vacation (preferably to Santorini because hello Greece is just beautiful but at this point pretty much anywhere with the clichéd white-sand-turquoise-clear-waters beach would do).

Anyway, this one's for Iris – kid-who-loves-spain on tumblr. Sorry I'm not some Ernest Hemingway, bby gull.

* * *

**Persona Non Grata**

_I want to figure out_

_Before it's too late_

_Before you find out_

_How you really feel_

* * *

He can't believe it. Just can't believe himself.

He's lost her.

He lost her. Just five minutes ago – he _lost_ her.

(Lost her lost her lost her lost her _lost her._)

Forever. (So maybe he's being a drama queen, but he really couldn't give a shit right now.)

_Lost her._

For someone as sharp and clever and intelligent as himself, his brain is struggling immensely to wrap itself around those three words. Granted, they're three simple little words – Basic English really, an easy conjugation. And yet he's still standing there, still on the pavement trying and failing magnificently to grasp this new concept.

He's a fool. If he knows one thing for certain, it's that. He's the biggest fool on the face of this earth – even more of a fool than Nate Archibald, because if Nate was _stupid_ for thinking his girlfriend was actually going to breakfast with the Humphreys, then Carter was an _idiot_ for believing Serena would forgive him for withholding vital information from her.

But you see though, he's not just a fool. He's a _drowning_ fool. And because he's a drowning fool, suffocating in an ocean of silken gold and bright blue eyes, Santorini night air and Ralph Lauren Romance every single fucking night of his life, is it really his fault he'd clung onto this information like a lost sailor to driftwood? The fact that he'd done this shouldn't really have been that much of a surprise. He's only human, after all, and a flawed one at that. Moral conscience hasn't ever been his forte. This had been his last chance, his golden key to the chocolate factory, his lifeline and his everything. Most of all, though, it had been the only way back home, back to _her_. His one and only chance, and he'd managed to ruin it, like everything else he'd ever touched in his existence. (He's like a reverse Midas, he thinks to himself bitterly, though they've got the same curse still and the same lust for golden things.)

There's a pain in his chest, aching left and low, and Carter's sure all the drugs and scotch and cigarettes have finally caught up with him. He self-diagnoses it as heartburn, curses the toxic addictions because now he's going to die tragically young in his prime – because there's no way that the stupid nuisance he's feeling is anything else. (He refuses to allow himself to think of it any other way, because he's Carter fucking Baizen and he's most definitely immune to that_ other _kind of ache in his chest.)

And yet. The ache grows every time he remembers every little detail that just happened, and it makes him absolutely loathe reality. (Because he lost her. Again, over and over.)

* * *

As he's walking, finally mobile again, tearing himself from the memory of _her _and resuming his emotionally handicapped playboy persona, he notices a light-mint-coloured piece of stiff stationary fluttering in the wind, stuck between the crack of the sidewalk and looking so out of place that he can't help but bend down and pluck it from its location. He's seen the stationary before, only he can't for the life of him remember _where._ It's an unconventional colour for a traditional method of communication, not the somewhat garish and overrated Tiffany's blue, but a more faded, frothier shade. The word sea foam keeps recurring in his mind, even though it doesn't really make any sort of sense in this context.

Turning the card over to decipher the loopy writing, the elegant yet carefree scrawl reads, "for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea. – e. e. cummings."

Carter can't help but let out a muffled laugh at the irony of the quote. He's about to let it fall to the wind again to be discarded to another square of cement, but there's something about the card that keeps him from being able to. Instead, he opts to stuff it inside his coat pocket and decide what to do with it later. For now though, he's going to get enough alcohol in his system to feel like a god, and then he'll pick some desperate tramps up and flirt his ass off like it's the last day of his life. (Because his life kind of _had_ ended today, if you think about it.) Maybe he'll screw a girl or three, too, because he can and because he's not one to mope about anyone, no matter how beautiful or special or golden.

* * *

After his sixth scotch on an empty stomach, when he's feeling like the king of the world and no doubt doing embarrassing things he'll regret come morning, he realizes why he didn't throw away the card.

They'd been out on a walk around the villa one afternoon during the summer, and Serena had eyed a set of note cards in a Greek boutique. She'd wrinkled her nose at the utterly conservative yellow-tinted material, announcing she'd have gotten it had it been in "the colour of the dress SJP wore one year to the Oscars and dubbed _barely mint_. It was either Dior or Chanel, I can't really remember. She'd had some crazy Treacy hat on, obviously. Could you imagine me walking around with a giant piece of art on my head, too? It'd probably fall off my head every twelve minutes." He'd laughed at such a _Serena _statement, ruffling her hair and pressing a kiss to her cheek. (She'd always hated the orthodox and been a bit of a bohemian, a non-conformist and dreamer.)

The fact he's even thinking about Serena and something that happened nearly a year ago when he's got another strikingly hot blonde practically crawling in his lap with her impressive rack in his face and ass on his crotch, tan legs barely covered by her garish dress, prompts him to call over the bartender a seventh time tonight. The man gives him a sympathetic smile, pushing the scotch forward and barely acknowledging the hussy sitting on top of him. "Whoever she is, she's worth it," the middle-aged man speaks softly. "I was you once upon a time. You'll scoff and say something snide about how you'd never work in a bar or how you have better shoes, but the thing is, at the end of the day, we're the same. We both had it all before, ruled the world and were on top of the world, but then we lost the girl, and everything else because of it. Her name was Sally. I lost her when I was twenty-six, because I thought I'd have plenty more like her, and that I was too good to stay, too good to commit, too good to chase her down –"

"Look, old man," Carter interrupts in an annoyed tone, "I really couldn't care less about your sob story. I get it, you think I'm hurting over a girl but -"

"Fate's awfully ironic, though," the bartender continues on calmly, as if the younger man hasn't disrupted his story. "Turns out, she was the one who had plenty more like me. She married a year later, and never looked back. And here I am working a bar –"

"I don't _care,_" the blue-eyed elitist bites harshly, tired of the tête-à-tête he's been forced into and desperate to get out of the monologue so he can _get on _to the whore of a socialite in his lap.

"-regretting a decision I made as a hotheaded young man twenty-two years ago" – apparently this man is intent on finishing his memory – "telling some blueblood playboy my story in foolish hope he'll actually remember this in the morning. I don't care if you forget the story, son – stories are meant to be forgotten. It's the tale they tell you're meant to keep with you for the rest of your life. Don't do what I did. Give your ego up so you can see how much more pride you'll have with her standing by your side than in this fleeting moment, with some floozy in your lap."

The grey-haired bartender picks up his towel again, giving the _floozy _an unappreciative eye before sighing and turning to go back to work, leaving Carter suddenly frozen in his stool, stunned by his last few words and mind scrambling to make sense of it all, to sober up and attempt to process everything he's just said. (The bartender looks like a pathetic, ignorant fool, but he's really not one once he opens his mouth.)

The man pushes his glasses up, looking back at the young man he'd once been himself, and says, "And son?"

Carter twists around to face the fatherly figure, effectively dumping the faceless skank unceremoniously off him. (He swears the old man smiles briefly, but then again, he's probably just seeing things.)

"Yeah," he prompts, mind surprisingly sharp after being trashed with Johnny Walker.

"Don't get her any of that flower and jewelry bullshit. Give her a quote or something."

The first thought that crosses the young hedonist's mind is that this _worker _has no right telling him what to do, ordering him around like that, but in a rare and brief out of character moment, Carter holds his hubris in check and processes the suggestion as what it is.

"I will," Carter promises, surprisingly genuine, the e.e. cummings quote in mind. He feels the need to know this man's name – he's been more of a father to him in the past five minutes than his own biological father has been in his entire twenty-one years of life – so when he asks for the bill, he makes sure he reads the name plaque of the guy, tipping a couple of Ben Franklins to him, satisfied when the bartender nearly jumps forty feet into the air when he tells him to keep the change.

He wants to stay and talk some more, but there's simply no time to waste. He's got a mission, and he's going to come out victorious. After all, Carter never was one to back out of a high-stakes game when the prize was so worthy and golden and meant for him.

* * *

A/N: Ugh, so I literally spent like…an hour on this so apologies for if it's way less than par. Considering that I'm too lazy to tweak it to absolute flawless perfection, I'm going to hope it's not as bad as my brain is telling me it is? Thoughts are always welcome though, leave a message and review!

To each their own,

VSF.


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